Irish voters' rejection of the Nice Treaty will not stop new members joining the bloc, but it underlines the need for a more politically integrated EU, Belgium's prime minister said today.
"Enlargement is now inevitable," Mr Guy Verhofstadt told a congress of his Liberal Party in Blankenberge on the Belgian coast. Belgium assumes the EU's rotating presidency on July 1.
"We must take the signal from the Irish electorate seriously, but it must not throw us off course. More than ever it is necessary to have a widening and deepening of the European Union," he said.
Mr Verhofstadt said the Irish referendum result would be discussed by EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday and by EU leaders at a summit in Sweden at the end of the week.
"Under the Belgian presidency, we are willing to help the Irish government ratify the Nice treaty," he added.
The treaty, agreed in the French town of Nice last December after marathon negotiations, reforms the EU's institutions to allow them to cope with nearly twice as many members.
Mr Verhofstadt, who has led a Liberal-Socialist-Green coalition in Belgium for the last two years, said the referendum result showed the need for fundamental EU reforms, including a written constitution and stronger supranational institutions.
He urged a directly elected president of the European Commission and clearer EU policies on foreign and defence policies and in the areas of asylum, immigration and crime.
Mr Verhofstadt did not mention the idea of a direct EU tax which he proposed in a newspaper interview earlier this year.
He said he hoped EU leaders would sign up to these aims when they meet at a summit in Laeken, near Brussels, in December.
For me (the Irish referendum) is in every sense an extra incentive to get an ambitious declaration in Laeken, he said.